


Beauty and the Beast

by A_Candle_For_Sherlock



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Forgiveness, Grief, M/M, Season/Series 04, and it fits too well, because the soundtrack for that scene sounds startlingly like the beauty and the beast theme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 14:48:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9329909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Candle_For_Sherlock/pseuds/A_Candle_For_Sherlock
Summary: He loves him, all of him. The light and the dark.





	

_I loved you,_ he thinks, when the soft light on the landing glints off the silver in John’s hair, when he turns at the doorway, hesitating, then shouting, because he thinks once more that Sherlock loves, wants, needs, someone, anyone else. He doesn't know. _I loved you, always, every inch of you, and I never said. You should know._

He tries to put words to a little of it, and John cuts him off, can’t bear it. John’s breathing hard through the shame and the fury that hovers around him now, that had settled around him that night, in the light of the water. And then John strips his sins bare, making Sherlock watch, making sure he sees the worst of John Watson. Making sure that Sherlock knows John, who had meant to be different, is now everything his father was (he has never told the story, but Sherlock knows it, every line)–-an angry man, an unfaithful man. A blessed fool.

 _But you’re more,_ he thinks. _You are my John. You are the best and the worst of you, the light and the dark of you. You saved me. I loved you. I love you._

John cries. His head sinks into his sheltering hand and he stands there weeping out his grief, while Sherlock shivers in his chair, stunned. Then he makes it to his feet, and goes to him, because John is still not leaving. (Save John Watson.)

John lets him come. He places a wondering hand on John’s spine; then slides it slowly up the curve of his back to the soft warmth of his neck, shaking with the pain and the joy of it. He tries a touch on John’s arm, drawing him in, growing more certain as John softens into him; holds John steady while his broken, unprotected voice cries out his loneliness into the air, and John nestles his forehead into Sherlock’s chest and quiets there.

John’s tears soak through his shirt into his skin, his gasps growing slower, steady, as he breathes Sherlock’s forgiveness in, the safety in their stillness. His hair is soft against Sherlock’s cheek.

_I loved you, I love you, I’ll love you._


End file.
